Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Thoughts on the Kermit Gosnell case

For those of you who get your news from places like CNN and MSNBC, Kermit Gosnell is a Philadelphia abortion provider who has been credibly accused of murder, use of unqualified personnel in his clinic, failure to perform adequate sanitation (resulting in infections of his patients), tax evasion, and a whole lot more.

How did this happen? Let's answer with a quesion; what is the moral and ethical difference between prenatal and postnatal infanticide, other than the setting? Were protesters of Roe v. Wade right all along, that once the barrier to destroying innocent human life is breached, that only a gossamer film of law protected the rest of us?

To answer that, let's look at how Gosnell and others have treated their patients and staff. Are clients protected from infection by appropriate sanitation? Do they report cases of clear statutory rape to authorities? Do they protect the rights of their employees by paying them honestly and treating them fairly? Do they protect clients by referring them to emergency care when needed?

As far as I've seen, there is a litany of doctors who don't do this minimal due diligence, not just Gosnell, and no less than Planned Parenthood has stood against reporting of statutory rape, requirements for emergency care, and even had one representative claim that the fate of infants born alive after an abortion attempt is "between the woman and the doctor."

In other words, the law of the land appears to be indeed a gossamer barrier between life and death in the abortion clinic, and the new face of pro-choice is that of Kermit Gosnell.